


I Can See That You're Thinking About Having Sex With Me But I Am Not Into You

by kathkin



Category: Merlin (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-17
Updated: 2009-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-17 22:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathkin/pseuds/kathkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on <a href="http://nozomi-no-da.livejournal.com/94536.html?thread=931400#t931400">this </a>prompt on the old Kink Meme: AU. Arthur can read minds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can See That You're Thinking About Having Sex With Me But I Am Not Into You

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by [](http://heriros.livejournal.com/profile)[**heriros**](http://heriros.livejournal.com/) , who is wonderful. Title by [](http://corvus-fox.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://corvus-fox.livejournal.com/)**corvus_fox** , who has not read this story and most likely never will. It is a ridiculously long title and doesn't quite fit the story. That is why I love it.

For the longest time, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world: the undercurrent of whispering voices, flashes of alien emotion and thought at random intervals. It sharpened as he got older, but he just assumed it was normal. He couldn’t imagine it being any other way.  
  


By the time he was six, it had reached the point that, when he was within a few feet of someone, he could hear their thoughts, as clear and precise as thoughts (being, as they were, rambling and indistinct) could be. But he _still_ thought it was perfectly normal.  
  


Until the day he was sitting in his room, midway through his lunch, and his nurse was looking out the window while she folded up some washing, wondering where Sir Frank was going in such a hurry, and he looked up and said:  
  


“He’s going to meet Sally from the kitchens,” because he’d heard Sir Frank thinking about that two days ago. His nurse didn’t turn to look at him before answering, not connecting his apparent non sequitur with her idle wonderings.  
  


“What was that?” she said.  
  


“Sir Frank,” he said. “He’s meeting Sally from the kitchens.” She’d turned to lookat him, eyes wide. “Didn’t you want to know?”  
  


The next thing he knew, he was being marched off to see Gaius, simultaneously complaining about how he wanted the rest of his stew, and learning, to his interest, that everyone knew that Gaius knew more about magic that most people in Camelot, and he was bound to have an explanation for this.  
  


Gaius questioned him on it a lot, and it occurred to Arthur for the first time that this might not being something everyone could do. He wondered that as carefully and distinctly as he could, but Gaius didn’t seem to hear, so he said it aloud.  
  


“Can’t everyone hear it?” he said.  
  


“No,” said Gaius. “No, Arthur. I’ve never known of anyone else who could do this at all.”  
  


Then he got Arthur to sit up on the table, and had a very careful look inside his ears, presumably for some kind of thought-hearing-mechanism, and Arthur learned all sorts of interesting things while he did so.  
  


“Who’s Nimway?” he said after a few minutes.  
  


“What was that?” said Gaius, then: “Don’t worry about it. It’s got nothing to do with you.”  
  


Arthur turned to look at him. “Yes it does,” he said. “You were thinking about me and her and how she-”  
  


“Yes, alright,” said Gaius, holding up a hand to silence him. Then he turned to Arthur’s nurse, who was wringing her hands on the other side of the room. “I think I might be a little while here. Maybe you should go back to work.”  
  


He turned back to Arthur once she was gone. “What did you hear?” he said.  
  


“Something about being born of magic and that’s how come my mother died, and then you were thinking maybe Nimway did this and I might have a spell on me. Who’s Nimway?”  
  


“Nimueh,” said Gaius. “Not Nim-way.” He sat down on a nearby chair. “Arthur, your father was quite adamant that you never hear of this. So you mustn’t tell him what you just heard.” Arthur nodded. “In fact, it might be best you never tell him of this ability at all.”  
  


“Why?” said Arthur, swinging his feet back and forth idly.  
  


“You know how he feels about sorcerors, of course,” Gaius began, but Arthur cut him off with an indignant:  
  


“I’m not a sorceror!” then, with rather less certainty: “Am I?”  
  


“No,” said Gaius. “No, Arthur. No. You can’t help having this ability, and I’m sure you’d never use it to harm Camelot, would you?” Arthur shook his head vigorously. “Well, then. But your father might not see it that way. He might not like it. So I think it’s best you don’t tell anyone.”  
  


“What, no-one at all?” said Arthur, who had rather been looking forward to bragging about this to any other boys he could find.  
  


“No-one at all,” said Gaius. He helped Arthur down from the table. “Now, go and finish your lunch.”  
  


“It’ll have gone cold by now,” said Arthur ruefully.  
  


“Off you go, Arthur,” said Gaius, in his most authoritative tone. Arthur went.  
 

*  
  


He discovered the drawbacks of it quite quickly after that. Any sizable crowd was hellish; so many voices, clamouring to be heard. It was years before he got to the stage where he could tune it out enough for it to be bearable. And he never stopped getting headaches.  
  


But on the other hand, every tutor he ever had was incredibly impressed with his knowledge. The knight who trained him in swordplay was constantly praising him for correcting himself without being told. And when he was fighting, well… he never lost once, taking every tournament he was entered in by storm.  
  


There was one awkward moment when a visiting knight called his style ‘uncanny’, and looked at him suspiciously for the rest of the time he was there, but, as far as Arthur knew, it never came to anything.  
  


But the older he gets, the main drawback, more and more, was the fact that his father expected him to help him eradicate magic from the land.  
  


And, well, there were a lot of problems with that. First and foremost, what was he supposed to do about _himself?_ He got so worried that, when he was twelve, he went to see Gaius and asked if there was any way to make it go away. Make him _normal_. (Gaius said he would look into it, and occasionally Arthur would go to him and ask if he’d found anything yet. And Gaius had not.)  
  


That was a few days after it occurred to him that Gaius might not just have meant that his father would get angry with him if he knew. It occurred to him that he might actually be in danger of being executed. Because they found out that one of the knights, Arthur’s _cousin_ , had been using magic (potions to enhance stamina, or something like that), and Uther had him executed, despite Arthur’s protests. There could be no exceptions. Ever.  
  


Fortunately for Arthur, though, the closest his father came to finding out was one night when he was fourteen, and the King had come to see him in his own room (the one and only time Arthur could remember him doing that).  
  


Which was all well and good until Gaius showed up with a little bottle of poppy tincture for the nigh-permanent headaches he had by then.  
  


His father raised an eyebrow, and looked at his questioningly. All Arthur managed was a mumbled ‘I, um, I’ve been getting-’ before Gaius jumped in.  
  


“Headaches, your majesty. He’s been getting them for a while now.”  
  


“Is it serious?” asked his father.  
  


“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” said Gaius. “I should think he’ll grow out of it.”  
  


He did not grow out of it.  
  


The other main problem was that Arthur was very good as finding sorcerors. Very, very good. From kitchen maids who were making love potions to people using magic to get their garden to grow better. He couldn’t help it. If they came near him at the wrong time, he’d know.  
  


Which just put him in a very awkward position, because technically he should turn them in, but how exactly would he explain _how_ he knew? And even if he could, he also happened to know which ones were harmless and which ones weren’t. He was, after all, acutely aware that using magic didn’t always lead to turning against Camelot.  
  


So he turned a blind eye to most of them, and felt extremely guilty about it.  
 

*

  


He was, however, quite tempted to turn in the idiot boy who used magic in a fight against him, which surprised him too much for him to manage to avoid it. But he decided that it wouldn’t be fair, because the boy seemed harmless enough, and did his best to avoid him.  
  


But then he ended up being his manservant.  
 

*

  


He knew there was something not right about Lady Helen from the start. Because she was the only person he ever met who’s thoughts he couldn’t hear. There was just a oddly muffled silence, which made him feel slightly dizzy.  
  


He concluded that she must be using magic to stop anyone from listening in, but decided that he shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Because she could be the harmless kind. Maybe she just happened to be a bit paranoid about people listening in.  
  


But then she tried to kill him.  
 

*

  


And then he ended up with Merlin around him _all the time_ , and he was _constantly_ thinking about magic. His mind seemed to drift to it in every idle moment (which was most of the time, because Merlin tended to find idle moments when there were otherwise none).  
  


So Arthur learned that he’d been using magic since he was a child, and couldn’t help it. That he’d been born with it. That he’d been told not to tell anyone, for his own safety. That he was living with an even more likely threat of execution than Arthur.  
  


Hell, the only person to know about it was even _Gaius_. It was almost creepy.  
  


Arthur supposed he should say something. But he couldn’t think how to put it ( _Oh, by the way, Merlin, I know you can use magic – no, don’t start panicking, I only know because I can read minds and you’ve been thinking about it a lot, so I’m not going to turn you in because we’re in the same boat, except we’re really not because I have a much bigger chance of getting away with this than you do_ ), and the longer it went on, the harder it became.  
  


Besides, the whole not telling anyone habit was kind of hard to get out of.  
 

*

  


Magic, of course, wasn’t the only secret he tended to find out.  
  


He happened to know, for example, that Gwen thought surprisingly dirty things about him whenever she saw him from behind, and that Morgana thought Uther was ‘a bit of a silver fox, really’ (which was just… wrong, on many levels). He knew that one of his knights was sleeping with two kitchenmaids, three ladies-in-waiting and one of the stableboys, all at once, and none of them knew.  
  


And he knew that Merlin had rapidly acquired another secret as well.  
  


Sometimes it took all of his self-restraint not to just turn around and say ‘good _God_ , Merlin, I can _hear_ you, you pervert!’.  
 

*

  


Then there was the hunting incident, which Arthur vowed never to speak of again.  
  


He had taken Merlin on an overnight hunting trip. He enjoyed these for two reasons: firstly, it allowed him to get out of Camelot for a while, and out into the woods, where it was blessedly _quiet_ , with only Merlin’s thoughts for company (he supposed he could have gone alone, but the idea of not being able to hear anyone else at all made him slightly nervous), and secondly, well… he liked hunting. A lot. Especially because he had a distinct advantage when it came to hunting, as he did with everything else (he could always tell whether or not there were any animals nearby, long before he could see them).  
  


The obvious result of this was that they ended up sleeping about two feet apart from each other, and Merlin turned out to be a very noisy dreamer.  
  


Which wouldn’t be too bad had he kept to some convoluted narrative about a horse living in a tree house and people who ate gold coins or something like that, but then he moved on to dreaming about something else.  
  


He started dreaming about Arthur.  
  


Arthur found himself suddenly inundated with images of _himself_ , himself pinned down by Merlin, tied to the bed, Merlin _straddling_ him, Merlin riding his cock while he moaned and writhed and _oh God this had to stop right now_.  
  


He leaned over and shook Merlin awake.  
  


“Wha’?” said Merlin, blinking up at him.  
  


It took Arthur a moment to think of a good reason to be waking up his manservant in the middle of the night. “Fire’s going out,” he said eventually.  
  


“You do it,” said Merlin. “M’sleeping.”  
  


“You’re the servant,” said Arthur, rolling over to face away from him. “ _You_ do it.”  
  


Merlin grumbled and complained, and continued to do so all the next day, which completely _ruined_ Arthur’s hunting trip.  
 

*  
  


Eventually Arthur concluded two things: firstly, that it was best for both of them if nothing come of Merlin’s attraction to him (which was most definitely not reciprocated), and secondly, he wasn’t going to tell Merlin about what he could do. Well, probably. No, of course he wasn’t. Well, unless-  
  


Alright, Arthur concluded _one_ thing.  
  


The decision was eventually taking out of his hands anyway during the _second_ hunting incident.  
  


They’d been in the middle of a lengthy discussion of great importance.  
  


“That was in no way my fault!” Merlin said too loudly from a few feet behind him. “You weren’t going to hit it anyway!”  
  


“Of course I was!” said Arthur, without turning around. Merlin kept thinking very uncomfortable things about him.  
  


“Were not!” said Merlin. “You were aiming about two feet in the wrong direction.”  
  


“I was not!” said Arthur. “I would’ve hit it, but then _someone_ started talking to me in overly-loud whispers and _distracted_ me.” Well, actually he’d been distracted by Merlin’s _even louder_ thoughts, but he could hardly admit that, could he?  
  


“That was a perfectly normal volume for whispering!” said Merlin.  
  


“Sure it was, Merlin,” said Arthur, who had yet to notice that he’d strayed into a part of the forest he’d never been in before. “Sure it was.”  
  


Just ahead of them half-buried in the ground, was a circle of flat, carved stones. Arthur, in his state of great aggravation, walked straight on into it.  
  


This was not a good idea.  
  


Thirty seconds later, the two of them were suddenly faced with a six-armed four-mouthed winged _atrocity_ which had apparently flown through a portal to hell that Arthur had somehow triggered.  
  


Most unfortunately for Arthur, one of those six arms was currently occupied with holding him up by an extremely painful mixture of shirt and chest. The only thing that was currently saving him was its inability to decide which mouth was most deserving of eating him.  
  


“Merlin!” he gasped out. “Do something!”  
  


Merlin, to his credit, didn’t ask any stupid questions like ‘what should I do?’ or ‘is it alright if I use magic to prevent your impending doom, sire?’.  
  


No, he just went for it, and obliterated the monstrosity in a wave of quite clearly and wonderfully magical fire.  
  


Arthur hit the ground hard, dusted away some ashes, and extracted the remains of its clawed hand from his shirt.  
  


“Oh God,” said Merlin.  
  


Arthur threw the hand away into the trees as hard as he could, and struggled to his feet.  
  


“Oh, God,” said Merlin. “Arthur, I’m sorry, I-”  
  


“It’s alright, Merlin,” said Arthur. But Merlin was too far into his panic to hear.  
  


“I’m so sorry, I- I was going to tell you, I swear, so please don’t turn me in, I’ve not been – I mean, I’m not using it to-”  
  


“Merlin-” Arthur began.  
  


“I mean, it’s not like – I’d never hurt anyone, you know that-”  
  


Arthur, having grown tired of Merlin’s ramblings, walked over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders.  
  


“Merlin!” he hissed. “I already knew, Merlin. I already knew.”  
  


Merlin broke off, gasping for breath, and stared at him. “What? How?”  
  


“Look, it’s – I’m not going to turn you in, alright? Isn’t that what matters?”  
  


“Well – yes, but – why? I mean, you-”  
  


“Look,” said Arthur, interrupting him. “Look, I – well, to be honest – we’re the same, alright?”  
  


Merlin frowned. “What do you mean?” he said.  
  


“Oh, for-” Arthur let go off his shoulders, pushed him away a little, then retrieved his fallen crossbow and started to walk back the way they’d come.  
  


“But- Arthur, wait!” said Merlin. “What are you talking about? You can’t just not tell me!”  
  


Arthur turned to face him. “I can, actually,” he said. “I’m a prince. And if I say leave it, then you’ll bloody well _leave it_.”  
 

*

  


Merlin did not leave it. That evening, he showed up in Arthur’s rooms with a tray full of dinner, and more questions (well, the same ones again).  
  


“Arthur, how did you know?” he said. “Please tell me.”  
  


Arthur sighed, took his head in his hands. “Do you really want to know?” He didn’t see Merlin nod, but he didn’t have to. “Alright. Fine. Sit down.”  
  


Merlin sat down. Arthur took his hands away from his face. “You were born with it,” he said. “Weren’t you?” Merlin nodded. “You could move things without touching them. One time you almost killed someone by felling a tree on top of them. The only people who knew were your mother and Will. And now Gaius knows, and he gave you a magic book, which you’ve been learning spells from, which, quite frankly, is just idiotic, given where you’re living. Oh, and you’ve saved my life so many times now that you’ve lost count, and so have I, to be honest. I suppose I should thank you for that. It’s long overdue.”  
  


“Arthur, _how?_ ” Merlin breathed, eyes wide.  
  


“I told you,” said Arthur. “I’m like you. I was born like this. Except I can hear what people are thinking instead.”  
  


Merlin’s eyes widened. “What, everyone?” Arthur nodded. “All the time?” Arthur nodded again. Merlin thought for a moment. “Is that why-”  
  


“Yes,” said Arthur. “Yes, that’s why the headaches. It’s maddening, sometimes.”  
  


“Oh,” said Merlin. “Arthur, why didn’t you _tell_ me?”  
  


“I wanted to,” said Arthur. “But- oh, I don’t know. I couldn’t think what to say, and then- you know how you get so used to just not ever telling anyone?”  
  


“Yeah,” grinned Merlin. “Yeah, I know the feeling.”  
  


Then his face fell. He suddenly thought of something that Arthur had really, _really_ hoped he wouldn’t remember.  
  


“Oh, God,” he said. “Arthur- I’ve been-”  
  


“I know,” said Arthur.  
  


“You’ve heard everything?” said Merlin. Arthur nodded. Merlin gulped. “I’m so sorry – I had no idea you could – Oh _God-_ ”  
  


“It’s alright, Merlin,” said Arthur. “I’ve just been ignoring it. Don’t worry.” This, he thought, would be a very bad time to mention the hunting incident.  
  


But then Merlin did that for him. Arthur heard him thinking about it, and stopped him before he could say anything. “Don’t,” he said. “Just leave it, alright?”  
  


“But did you – I mean – I think-” Arthur nodded. “All of it?” Arthur nodded again.  
  


Merlin swore rather loudly.  
  


“Language, Merlin,” said Arthur. Merlin just whimpered. “Look, can we just go back a stage in this conversation? Because this is going downhill quite a lot.”  
  


Merlin shifted awkwardly in his chair, thinking that he rather wanted to leave.  
  


“Or you can leave,” said Arthur.  
  


“Thank you, sire,” Merlin gasped out, and fled.  
 

*

  


And then, of course, he _would not stop thinking about it_. Every time he and Arthur were in the same room for the next week, all Merlin would be thinking was _Oh God he knows I have sex dreams about him oh God oh God_.  
  


Eventually, Arthur decided that there was only one logical thing to do. And that was the only reason why he did it. Because it was logical. Really.  
  


Just over a week later, he caught Merlin by the arm as he was about to leave for the night, and said: “I have a suggestion.”  
  


“Oh?” said Merlin. The fact that Arthur was holding his arm was making him very uncomfortable, to Arthur’s amusement.  
  


“Yes,” said Arthur. “Would you stop being so preoccupied with me having seen what you were dreaming about if you could do it for real?”  
  


A pause, then: “Wait, what?”  
  


“I said-” Arthur began.  
  


“I heard you, but – are you serious?” said Merlin.  
  


“Completely,” said Arthur.  
 

*

  


So that was how he came to be tied to the bed in his room with Merlin straddling him, telling him forcefully to calm down every time he heard any doubt creeping into his thoughts, and then, eventually, once they got into it, just lying there and moaning and writhing and saying _oh yes oh yes oh Merlin yes_.  
  


And then afterwards he demonstrated to Merlin that his wonderful ability to read minds could be put to an even better use than winning tournaments. Merlin agreed that yes, that was the best possibly use of mindreading.  
  


Then he came. Hard.  
 

*

  


After this, Arthur came to two conclusions: firstly, that he was very good at choosing the most logical course of action, because Merlin had completely ceased to be preoccupied with what had happened, and secondly, that Merlin was surprisingly good in bed.  
  


Then he finally got round to telling Gaius that he didn’t actually want him to find a way to take his ability away after all. Because he actually quite liked it.


End file.
